Commercial free terrestrial radio. A platform with no ulterior motive, no ads, other than PSA’s about being mindful of your dog getting hit by a kicked up rock should it’s head be out the window on the freeway, or your legal rights and where to get more information about them. DJ’s of all stripes, encyclopedia thick graveyard shifted companions on the FM, first time hesitating and nervous little hands, black paint, white paint, black paint, and then another white out noise coat. It is a lottery of mixed results. I don’t play the horses, the armless slots, the table green, nah, but I listen to KSPC in the car and other incredible radio stations from around the world online live when I can. Don’t tell us what is coming next. The playlist is changing with our breaths.
Bill Chen, I first heard his radio show on KSPC when I was fifteen and he was then a barley legal 21 yr old. We became fast friends three years later and have been since. His vast wealth of music knowledge and how he utilizes that knowledge to put together an always compelling radio show inspired me then and inspires me still. He and I have been doing our collaborative radio show for a spell now, I think this is our fifth year that we begin tomorrow. I smile from ear to ear when we do the show excepting when he calls me names, argues with me, both on and off air, and generally gets me to take the bait. Better still, I listen to his free jazz show, All This Jass, every Saturday from 1PM to 4PM PST on KSPC where I don’t have to cue up nothing or spit into a mic. When I am away for months at a time, like this past summer, I will send in sets weekly to be played, but I often dream of not coming back to the show so I can selfishly listen to three hours of Bill free floating out music from all walks.
Long winded short, Bill and I start a new season of the show this Wednesday September 2nd from 9am to noon PST on KSPC 88.7 FM. Of course you can listen live online at kspc.org or hear our previous two shows at your convenience there too. Small things, two knuckleheads laughing in a basement and playing records, not aware in the change of the weather or the news from the outside world as we spacecraft, flashlighting under oceans, sifting sand to find the perfect next song, it is the labor of the heavens, cheap plasticine winged with matching out of tune lyers in hand. Bill Chen, he has a new 7″ in hand, after he plays it I will duck so it does not take off my head.